As casualties rise in Iraq, it is inevitable that the clamor for an "exit strategy" will grow. Certain responsible politicians and pundits predicate an American exit on the restoration of security and stability to Iraq. Others are eyeing the United Nations or other unspecified "allies" in a rush to cut and run. Both miss the mark.

The American exit strategy must be tied to the achievement of concrete political goals in Iraq. Until there is a credible Iraqi governing authority with unlimited sovereignty, there will be instability and violence. And as long as there is instability and violence, neither the United Nations nor other "allies" will be interested in enabling an American race for the door.

Failure to understand the centrality of an Iraqi governing structure has been key to American setbacks in Iraq. The Bush administration has proven incapable of looking beyond the initial goal of removing Saddam Hussein and inquiring into the genuine meaning of liberation for the Iraqi people. Liberation does not mean simply the removal of an odious dictator; liberation means self governance--the antithesis of occupation.

The statue of Saddam fell in Baghdad's Firdos Square on April 9, 2003. Though victory had been assured from the very beginning, the United States and its coalition partners seemed perplexed by the question of who should succeed the Iraqi dictator. The answer to that question, far more easily answered in Afghanistan, continues to elude us more than one year later, and remains the most glaring weakness of the American-led reconstruction effort.

In Afghanistan the Bush administration appeared to understand that Afghans preferred to be governed by Afghans, even a hand-picked expatriate like Hamid Karzai. We pretended to have little knowledge about the vagaries of Afghan ethnic politics, and after a hastily cooked up loya jirga, happily dumped the problem of governance in Karzai's lap. By contrast, in Iraq no Iraqi was good enough, or at least seen as good enough by all the factions with players to promote. In place of this absent Iraqi figurehead, first Jay Garner, then L. Paul Bremer, and now Bremer and United Nations troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi have eagerly assumed the role of colonial governor.

Last July, Bremer appeared to hand power off to a coalition-picked Iraqi Governing Council. But neither Bremer nor his people inside the Coalition Provisional Authority had any genuine interest in the credibility of the IGC. Members of the Council were treated as stooges by the British and the Americans; little surprise then that the Iraqi people also began to view them as stooges. But without the IGC, the only person left governing Iraq was Jerry Bremer.

The dilemma was painfully obvious earlier this year when Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani rejected U.S.-sponsored ideas for elections. While he may have been speaking for the majority of Iraqis, there was no way to know; the only person with enough political clout to contradict the ayatollah was Bremer. Worse yet, Americans have rejected and discredited the liberal members of the Iraqi Governing Council, but in their desperation have re-embraced the Baath party and former leaders of Saddam's Republican Guard corps.

As June 30 rapidly approaches and the coalition looks around frantically for an Iraqi to take sovereignty, we find that there is no Iraqi. A year that could have been spent on building civil society, empowering political parties and transferring credibility to capable Iraqis has been frittered away. Iraqis, suspecting correctly that the United States is at sea, are jockeying for power. And those who know only power through violence are fighting hard.

So it is understandable, amidst instability and gunfire, for focus--and talk--to turn to a way out. But there is only one way out; Iraqis must be liberated from occupation, free to live under leaders of their own political choosing. President Bush has said that "the failure of Iraqi democracy would embolden terrorists around the globe, increase dangers to the American people, and extinguish the hopes of millions in the Middle East." President Bush clearly gets the theory; the time has come to make Iraqi democracy real. Then we can exit.

Danielle Pletka is vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Molly McKew is research program manager for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI.